The IT industry has had open source software to help fuel innovation and the time is now right to have open source for hardware too. That's the message coming out of the Open Compute Summit in New York City today from multiple technology companies including Facebook, Intel, Dell and Red Hat.

Facebook initially announced the Open Compute Project in April of this year. Today, Facebook took the next step with the formal announcement of the creation of the Open Compute Foundation to help lead the effort forward.

"We're really happy to announce that today, open source is not just something that you can use to describe software, but also to describe the hardware space as well," Frank Frankovsky, Facebook's director of hardware design said in the keynote session at the Open Compute Summit.

Frankovsky explained that the Foundation has developed a well thought out intellectual property regimen for contributions. As such, it is Frankovsky's view that most suppliers will be comfortable contributing their intellectual property to the Open Compute Foundation.

"This is about community, not just about the people that can consume the technology, it's also about the supply base," Frankovsky said. "We are passionate about delivering tangible goods and we are publishing specs and source files."